Hiking Easy Pass In The North Cascades

Fall is the time of year I am most prone to being homesick for my old location in Washington. By now the Cascade mountain high country has had freezing temperatures, which the result being that you can now hike without being covered with bug spray.

Before the first freeze you can find wild blueberries that are the tastiest blueberries you'll ever have. You'll still find edible berries after a freeze, but the texture will be altered by the freezing and thawing. You also may be competing with some bears for the berries.

In the picture you are looking at Easy Pass. Despite the name it's a fairly strenuous hike, with an elevation gain of 2,800 feet. The trailhead is past Newhalem near milepost 151 on Highway 20 in the Okanogan National Forest. I'm pretty sure that the trail soon crosses into North Cascades National Park.

It was a fairly short drive from my abode in Washington to views like you see in the picture. I looked out my kitchen window to a view of the Mount Baker volcano. When I look out my kitchen window now I see a Barnett Shale gas drilling operation. But no mountains or volcanoes.

Fosdic Fishing With Ducks In Hot Humid Fort Worth

The sky was dripping this morning for an hour or two. By noon it had dried up enough to escape to Oakland Lake Park for a walk around Fosdic Lake. It was in the 80s with the rain having made it real humid out there.

Due to it being a bit warmer the past couple days the pool was a bit warmer this morning around 6 than it was during our severe recent cold snap.

That is the Fort Worth Needle, also known as the Tandy Mountain Tower, that you see rising from the trees on the west side of Fosdic Lake. Those ducks in the foreground do not give me much time to take a picture. They expect food from me and start waddling my way as soon as I stop to take a picture.

The Fosdic Lake ducks can get very aggressive when they want something to eat. I should make more of an effort to bring them some duck food.

Speaking of food, my favorite Washington state gourmet has put pears and bleu cheese on my mind. That combo sounds real good. I've got a lot of really good bleu cheese, but where am I going to find a decent pear in Texas?

I think I've mentioned before that there are warning signs at various locations around Fosdic Lake advising that it might not be a good idea to eat fish you catch here. This warning does not seem to stop people from doing a lot of Fosdic fishing.

Today it was an old man and his pole angling for Fosdic fish. I was on the other side of the lake when I used my camera's maximum zoom to take a picture of the Fosdic fisherman. I don't know if he caught anything. I do know there are fish in the lake because I saw one jump out of the water, near the trio of ducks.

The forecast is for stormy weather with thunder starting up by late afternoon. So far it appears to be behaving itself out there.

Don Young Fort Worth Weekly's Best Of 2009 Pick For Watchdog, Mayor Mikey Moncrief Politician Most Likely To Sell Grandma To Highest Bidder

I was looking for a photo of Don Young, he being Fort Worth and Tarrant County's #1 community activist, protector of the Tandy Hills Natural Area and fighter for cleaner Fort Worth air, but I could find no Don Young photo.

But there were plenty of photos of Alaska's congressmen named Don Young. Alaska's Don Young is not a citizen activist fighting big oil polluters. Alaska's Don Young is one of those corrupt politico types who activists fight.

Meanwhile, here in Fort Worth, dubbed "Dirty ol' Town" by our local Don Young, in it's annual Best Of issue, Fort Worth Weekly's Critics picked Don Young as the Best of 2009 Watchdog, saying...

The old phrase "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog" applies perfectly to community activist Don Young, a small guy with a lot of fight in him. Young has been looking over the shoulder of the gas drillers in Tarrant County since they first arrived, constantly letting news media and the public know what's going on. He's tireless in his efforts to protect Fort Worth from the negative aspects of urban drilling. The town could use more like him.

Meanwhile in the category Politician Most Likely to Sell Grandma to the Highest Bidder both the Reader's and Critic's Choice was Fort Worth's extremely corrupt Mayor Mike Moncrief, with the critics saying...

Let's face it, Mayor Mikey is the call on this one. Why not some city council member? Because Mayor Mike tells them what to do. Why not a Tarrant County politician? Because none of them wield the power that the mayor does. Nope, Mike's it. He's it because he is selling this city down the drain to gas developers. He's spent nearly his entire time in office courting big business and pushing big deals while letting the best things about Fort Worth waste away. Just imagine what he'd do with a grandma he didn't like.

Two Fort Worth Police Officers Fired By Fort Worth's Hottest Male For Driving While Intoxicated

That is a Fort Worth Police Officer, Evangelin G. Carr, in the picture, resisting arrest by Keller police after he failed a field sobriety test on August 18.

The picture was taken by the dash-cam video cop camera. The video shows Carr resisting arrest when the Keller police attempted to handcuff him. Over and over again Carr is heard saying he does not want to lose his job.

Yesterday, Fort Worth Police Chief, Jeffrey Halstead, fired Officer Carr, saying, "Officer Carr’s actions and behavior is a discredit to all of the hardworking men and women of the Fort Worth Police Department and will not be tolerated."

E. G. Carr's criminal case is pending.

The second Fort Worth Police Officer fired yesterday was P. Payton (first name not disclosed). Payton was found guilty of the Class B Misdemeanor of driving while intoxicated on September 21. Payton was arrested in North Richland Hills on January 25, driving drunk while off duty.

On a totally different, yet somewhat related note. This week's annual Best of 2009 edition of Fort Worth Weekly, in the People & Politics section, in the Hottest Local Celebrity (Male) category, picked the aforementioned Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead as the Hottest Local Male, saying...

"His good looks are on the rugged side, but in his mid-40s, Fort Worth's current chief can still turn some heads. So nice that staying fit is part of the job. And humility has its own charm, of course: Halstead started out making excuses and sounding defensive after the Rainbow Lounge incident, but when evidence showed officers had been in the wrong, he backtracked convincingly. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that a cop beat him up when he was 19. Ah, there's more allure: a man with a past."

Layla Not Too Happy Taking DART Green Line To The State Fair Of Texas

Yesterday Layla listened to my apparently bad advice and took the DART Green Line to the State Fair of Texas. She seems to have misunderstood what I suggested she do, because she drove herself and her entourage to Dallas, to the American Airline Center.

Driving a long distance to get on mass transportation seems sort of counter intuitive, sort of like when I drive a long distance to go on a bike ride or a hike.

Layla had trouble finding a place to park by the American Airlines Center. Eventually a place was found to park the car. There are free parking lots near a lot of the DART stations, like Mockingbird. But, apparently Layla didn't know that.

Since she lives in the Fort Worth zone, what I'd actually suggested was that Layla put her group on the TRE, as in Trinity Rail Express, from Fort Worth to Dallas, then get on the DART train to take the Green Line to the fair.

Layla also had trouble getting a ticket on DART. Two of the four ticket machines were in malfunction mode. The ones that worked did not like Layla's $20 bill. The machines don't take credit cards.

When they finally made it on a train they waited and waited and waited for it take off. When the train eventually took off there were not very many people on board. So much for DART saying Green Line trains would be taking off every 15 minutes.

Layla claims it took an hour to get from the American Airlines Center to the Fair Park Station at the State Fair of Texas, with many stops on the way. Next time she says she will skip taking the train and park at the fair, saving, she thinks, time and money.

Even though Layla had a bad experience, somewhat self-inflicted in my opinion, I am going to take the TRE and DART when I go to the State Fair of Texas.

Study Indicates High Rate Of Dementia Among NFL Players & More On Tony Romo's Backwards Baseball Cap

Earlier today I blogged about the super shocking disgrace of Dallas Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo's improper use of a baseball cap.

There are Dallas Cowboy fans here in this Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex zone I live in who feel quite strongly about Tony Romo's outrageous fashion faux pas, getting so worked up about it that they send off earnest missives to the local newspaper editors.

And then this afternoon one of my researching corespondents, based here in D/FW, sent me information from the New York Times regarding a study commissioned by the National Football League in which it was learned that Alzheimer's disease and other memory-related problems appear in the league's players at a rate vastly higher than the general population of non-football players.

100s of on-field concussions occur at all levels of football every week, at high school, college and the NFL, there are football players sustaining head injuries. Apparently those silly looking helmets need a serious re-design.

Scrutiny of brain injuries in football players has grown more intense in the past 3 years, with many players and former players coming forward and reporting cognitive problems.

The NFL is currently conducting an in depth study of 120 ex professional football players, doing extensive neurological examinations over the course of the study. This process is expected to take several years.

For dementia related diagnoses, 6.1 percent of NFL players age 50 and above had a dementia rate 5 times higher than the general population. NFL players aged 30 to 49 showed a dementia rate 19 times the national average.

I do not think Tony Romo is quite 30. I heard Tony Romo speak at an event in Dallas a couple years ago. I was quite impressed and found him very likable. I really hope it is not early onslaught of NFL football dementia that is causing Tony to forget which way to point his baseball cap. You add this baseball cap problem to Tony's seemingly irrational dumping of Jessica Simpson and you have some rather strong indications of somewhat slightly demented behavior.

I don't know if Tony Romo is still firing on all cylinders in the football throwing department. Are there signs of diminished capacity there, too? I don't watch football, if I can help it, so I don't know. I think the Dallas Cowboys won their most recent game and there was no rioting of the Party Pass People.

My Eyes On Texas Website Got Hacked Again

It has not been a good morning in Durango World.

My Eyes on Texas website got hacked by malware again. I think I caught it before Google did. I found out I had a problem when I clicked on my State Fair of Texas page to find it acting odd. I looked at the source code and saw the hacking code.

The hacking seems to always target the same pages, all of them the ones that get the most hits. Like Turner Falls Park.

My webpage about the Dallas Cowboy/Jerry Jones/Arlington Stadium building eminent domain abuse scandal also is one that has gotten hacked each time. If I were a paranoid sort I would suspect that nefarious Jerry Jones guy of being behind trying to shut me up about his new palace in Arlington.

I've Googled for info about my server, IX Webhosting, before and found a litany of complaints. Most of the complaints do not match my experience with my server. Yes, the Ukrainian support people can be a bit of a strain, but they usually end up being useful. Calling support has always been a good experience, friendly and efficient.

Many people have complained that the IX servers go down regularly. Some claiming it's an every day occurrence. That has not been my experience. Some claim the servers are slow and that there are email and spam problems. That also has not been my experience.

Yes, there was the time a couple years ago when my home page re-directed to Ebay. I called support and the problem was fixed while I was on the phone. I never did get an explanation as to how this could happen. Same with the hacking incidents. I followed IX's tech support instructions as to how to tighten FTP security. And then had the problem re-occur, this morning.

It's very perplexing. I had other things I wanted to do this morning than fix a website.

Tony Romo's Backwards Cap & America's Dallas Cowboy Team's Eminent Domain Abuse

I found some good letters to the editor and comments in this morning's Dallas Morning News about Dallas Cowboy, Tony Romo, he being the team's quarterback and former boy toy of Jessica Simpson.

Tony Romo often wears a baseball cap backwards. I have read negative comments about this previously, and again this morning in the DMN letters to the editor.

The cap backwards umbrage commenter also mentioned the Dallas Cowboys being America's Team. That got a good comment. I also have commented before about the Dallas delusion of being America's Team.

Another letter to the editor was regarding the abuse of eminent domain crimes that were committed in Arlington to get land for the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium. This letter was written in reaction to a Dallas Morning News article about America's Team and the corrupt Jones family.

I'll copy the letters and comment below, followed by the YouTube video I made of the homes and apartments destroyed in Arlington for the new stadium.

Turn that hat around

If Tony Romo wants to turn the Dallas Cowboys around, he needs to turn his hat around first.

Romo is the quarterback for the Cowboys, not a street musician. He should wear the uniform properly until he has earned the right to assume the casual nature he projects with his various hat-wearing contortions.

Perhaps if he wins a Super Bowl, he will have earned the respect needed before he can take a casual approach to dressing for America's Team.

Patrick Gallagher, Fort Worth

The Dallas Cowboys are NOT America's team. There is no such thing. And get a little perspective here. They are a private entertainment company like any other sports team or league. Sports teams do become part of our culture like musicians and other entertainers but they are not any more deserving of respect than any other private enterprise.

Comment Posted by Mike D

The right to take away homes

Re: "Behind America's Team and its home, an American family -- State-of-the-art facility a labor of love for Joneses," Monday news story.

How do the Jones family and Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck justify the use of eminent domain to seize homes and businesses in order to build the stadium where they wanted?

The Jones family and Cluck always have pat answers that voters voted for it, the stadium brings tourists, the city owns the stadium or the owners were paid, but these homes and businesses were not for sale.

Heir Stephen Jones is correct -- this stadium was built on the backs of families -- the working class and elderly former owners whose homes and businesses were condemned and destroyed.

Linda Lancaster, Arlington

Massive South Pacific Earthquake Sends Deadly Tsunami To Samoa & American West Coast

I've been intending to find out where, in the South Pacific, Samoa is located ever since Survivor Samoa started up. I now know exactly where it is.

This morning news of a powerful 8.3 magnitude earthquake striking about 125 miles from Samoa, causing 4 tsunami waves, 15 to 20 feet high, to crash into Samoa and American Samoa up to a mile inland.

So far the death count is at 99 on Samoa and American Samoa, with dozens missing. Tsunami warning sirens got many people to high ground before the big flood arrived.

There are 180,000 people on Samoa, with 65,000 on American Samoa.

10 hours after the quake, Japan was hit with very weak tsunami waves. On the U.S. west coast strong currents and dangerous waves were forecast from California to Washington. Los Angeles lifeguards cleared beaches by 8 pm due to the possible dangerous currents.

I've seen the damage caused by a tsunami from a massive earthquake in Alaska. If I remember right that one killed a couple people and did a lot of damage in Crescent City, California. That tsunami also flooded on to shore on the Washington coast, doing damage at Ocean Shores and other low lying locations.

I was hit by a rogue wave years ago while on the beach at Ocean Shores. All of the sudden it was obvious the incoming wave was bigger than the norm. Everyone started running. I picked up my little sister and ran, climbing up on a big driftwood log. The wave hit, knocking us off the log, getting us soaking wet. Every time I see images of the effects of a tsunami I think of that rogue wave. A tsunami would be like a rogue wave on steroids. Very very scary.

We may be getting natural gas drilling caused earthquakes here in North Texas, but there is very little chance any of those little temblors will be causing a tsunami.

Age Related Fort Worth Forgetfulness & Other Woes

I got up around 4 this morning. It was not an insomnia issue. I'd slept well, woke up and knew I was done with the sleeping thing for the night.

It was while down at the pool this morning I had my first dingbat incident of the day. It was 56 when I went outside to brave the elements. The water was warmer than the air.

The sky was being clear and very dark. A very starry sky. Often the stars are not all that viewable in this polluted urban zone. But this morning I saw the Orion constellation. I looked for the Big Dipper, but I think trees blocked the view.

I forgot to say what the first dingbat incident of the day was. Well. I forgot to take a towel with me. That did not turn into the chilly problem that I thought it would.

When I got done pooling I turned into a Twittering Maniac, seeing if I could repeat yesterday's record breaking website/blog day.

After I tired of Twittering I shoved a chicken in the oven. A totally natural bird with none of that added bad stuff that some chickens get injected with. I pulled the chicken from the cooking device about noon and headed to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake.

That is when my 2nd dingbat incident of the day occurred. I have developed a habit of never leaving home without my camera, lest I miss taking a picture of something strange that I might come upon. Well, as I walked along I looked up to see an interesting view of the Tandy Hills tower that I called the Fort Worth Space Needle. I reached in the pocket where I keep the camera to find the pocket empty.

I knew where my camera was so I didn't panic thinking it'd slipped out of my pocket like a previous incident. So, no picture, today, of the Fort Worth Space Needle as seen from Oakland Park.

The chicken and baked tomatoes turned out real tasty. I really should open a restaurant.